So, I voted. I opted for the independent candidate. If labour hold our council next year we're going to lose Gypsies Green, it's the only athletics facility in town and what's more it's mainly grassy so it fits seamlessly into the coast line. Last year the Labour council did a secret agreement with a hotel group. By the time anyone in the town found out they were going to sell the green it had all been organised. A three storey hotel that will be an eyesore on a previously unspoiled stretch of coast line. No one in town wants it but at the council meeting to discuss objections the independent councillors who spoke up against it were literally shouted down, being told to "shut up and get out" by the Labour majority councillors. If Labour hold the council we can say goodbye to our last athletic facility and also an area of coastline that is one of the few things the town has going for it.
I'm hopeful that enough people in the town care about the seafront to vote against their party loyalties.
I'm doubtful that enough people in the town care about the seafront to vote against their party loyalties.
I still entirely despair of our democracy, it's badly broken and in most cases the real issues are obscured by party politics so that it's made impossible to vote on principle because you know your vote won't count.
(For anyone who's ran or watched the Great North Run, when you cross the finish line, immediately in front of you is a little dip containing a running track and a football field. It has a few seats but they're around the grassy bowl bit so they don't intrude on the view. That is what we stand to lose in favour of a very big hotel that is neither needed or wanted. It also has some historical significance in that Muhammed Ali sparred there and Evel Kenevil jumped there.)
Finding myself with an afternoon to spare today I decided to go and see the exhibition at the Laing which has just opened. It's called Love and is touring from the National Gallery in London featuring works from Vermeer, Goya and Tracey Emin.
I have to admit, the Vermeer was a little disappointing, it was a very good painting but it seemed to lack soul, I couldn't believe the girl as a real person. The Goya I found more aesthetically pleasing but still somewhat prosaic, like something you'd have on the wall of the parlour. Progressing onwards I was given literal shivers by reading a small notice about the provenance of one work - they're basically looking to find which poor, most likely doomed Jew it was stolen from, it came to them via Adolf Hitler's personal collection. The thought that he had appreciated the same work of beauty that we now look at in the gallery is somehow grotesque - that that evil man possessed the canvas as his own, it kind of bore down the weight of his crimes and robbed the work of it's artistic significance by vesting it with another more alarming one. Then there was a Turner that proved me wrong in some of my past criticism's by demonstrating the scale and the amazing ethereal quality of figures he could make with light.
The real moment of the afternoon, however, was when I was ambling along the back wall of the exhibition. I came to the info card before I came to the painting. It read Raphael - The Madonna of the Pinks. I have no idea why a painting as famous and valuable (the national paid £22 million for it) as this wasn't billed, but I'm glad it wasn't. Up until that point it was an interesting exhibition, then you suddenly stumble on a genuine masterpiece as if by accident. It's like going to open mic night at the pub and mid way through seeing Dylan step up, or turning up to a small town theatre and seeing Michael Caine step up to the stage.
In a show with Vermeer, Goya, Turner and more the two artists that stood out most were the Raphael and the Venetian Giovanni Battista Tiepolo's The Banquet of Cleopatra. Add to that the fact that on passing the new sculpture in the lobby my first thought was "No one has really been able to sculpt since Bernini..." I have came to the conclusion that Italians just do it better.
As promised to Bold as Love following her post of the Vanessa Paradis track. Admittedly, neither is even remotely similar musically, but they're both rather French.
Admittedly it's brash, arrogant and distinctly emphatic, but then, isn't that what makes it so enjoyable? Plus Tchaikovsky used parts of the theme in the 1812 which I may have mentioned, once or twice, is a particular favourite of mine.
Actually, the other track isn't what I thought it was - I'm sure I had a quite mellow, but funky sounding French track in there somewhere, but it's not the stereolab one after all.
I think this discovery has kind of killed the point of this post. Oh well.
The Olympic torch was lit in Beijing, China on Monday and will be taken on 130-day journey throughout the world. What is your reaction to the Tibet activist groups who plan to demonstrate in large cities as the torch passes through because of China's plans to take the torch through Tibet?
Forgive me for being a pedant but I think the protests might be to do with slightly more than the fact the torch will pass through Tibet. I think we should seriously consider boycotting the Olympics, so frankly the more people that protest the torch passing the better.
Show us the athlete you'd most like to be for one game.
I'd have to be Kevin Pietersen, I'm a huge fan of Alistair Cook as a solid and dependable batsmen, but at the end of the day Pietersen, when on form, is the best in the world and a proven match winner. He has such a good range of shots and seems to thrive on the pressure.
I think his 158 runs in the second innings of the fifth test at the oval in '05 is probably my favourite sports watching memory ever. I remember that fifth morning it looked like it had swung back in Australia's favour. KP came out with Glenn "we'll win this series 5-0" McGrath on a hat trick and they had an early appeal and the pessimist in me said it was a bad sign. Then he just started hitting everything they could bowl at him - by the time he hit Shane Warne back over his head for six it was cloud nine time.
(I apologise in advance to the non-cricket types, which is possibly everyone!)
What's your favorite gardening tip for spring?
Hire someone.
Share the song you would choose to come out to in a boxing match.
"I don't know about the Marquis of Queensbury rules, but the Oscar Wilde rules are shoot on sight."
With this in mind the pugilistic contest betwixt my fellow man and I is likely to be short, lasting roughly the time it takes for one to lay one's hand upon one's service revolver and shoot the poor old chap. Not quite Marquis of Queensbury rules, I agree, but as long as one can quote Oscar Wilde in one's defence, I figure one is going to be okay.
With this in mind one has refrained from the dubious delights of Eye of the Tiger or the adrenaline pumping nature or Push the Tempo and decided to plump for the rather more restrained The Sporting Life, a rather chipper little tune by the Decemberists (Whom one has now absolved of all guilt for their part in undermining the Romanov dynasty after one was assured that they were a separate entity to the original Decemberists) that should have them tapping their feet in their aisles as they await the fight.
This evening I've been looking into sending off my novel. I've already sent for a book version from lulu, but I've been looking at publishers and literary agents. The way I see this I can go three routes...
- Send manuscripts to publishers directly. - I like this idea, however many don't accept unsolicited submissions, and at 50,500 words mine is only just acceptable. On the other hand it is something I can do personally, and Macmillan New Writing and Random House will accept them.
- Find a literary agent. - This seems difficult, there are thousands of them, they all take different things, I don't fully understand how it works, it seems needlessly complex and the hardest option. It also seems that it's the one with the best success rate.
- Publish Myself. - This is what I would enjoy most. Because I'm a web designer the idea of knocking up a site and selling direct appeals to me. The problem with this is that the internet is a very big place and I'm never likely to sell very many copies at all as I'd not be able to get reviewed or anything (I don't think?) or sold in stores. However it does let me be creative.
I have also considered doing the self publishing route with a view to later getting published, but I'm not sure if having sold it myself effects that or not. (Although as long as I keep all the rights, this shouldn't be a problem, right?)
Anyway, I am pondering all of the above. In the mean time, have a tune..
Those fortunate (or unfortunate as the case may be) enough to have kept up with my previous online incarnations may be aware of the ongoing state of conflict between myself and the local sea gulls. This has involved all kind of air raids in which they have attacked my personage with poop and even thrown a dead fish head though my skylight.
Unfortunately it's the time of year again when they seem to make their first militant overtures toward my personage and I got up this morning to find that they had invested positions around my house which make Sparta's siege of Troy a veritable picnic.
Thanks to the latest satellite's imaging technology and the magic of computer graphics, I can show you the positions that they have occupied. The Captain's Cabin is, as you can see vaguely central, immediately to the west of that you have a seagull on my chimney, only yards from me and making much noise. Directly south of me is a two gull strong battalion on the house opposite's chimney. To the East there is next door's loft extension which had a two gull battalion this morning, then beyond that lies the next door neighbour's chimney, which was at one point earlier invested with three gulls, all bellowing their hideous war cries. The gulls are also patrolling no fly zones to the east and west of my cabin, running as far as the street's either side of me.
My position is perilous and often very, very noisy. I am assured that I can call in close air support in the form of the council, however last time a neighbour did that they shot the gull down into my yard and I found it there suspended upside down from our shed door and dripping blood, which was quite unnerving. So, while I find the idea of shooting them cruel and horrible, there are so many it's getting ridiculous and I'm not sure what should be done. I'd rather not spend my waking hours surrounded by aggressive birds and living like it was a Hitchcock film.
Your ingenious plans will be, as ever, accepted in the comments.
What work of art do you find inspirational
The photograph above, however, inspires me, it inspires me because it shows how modern mediums can be used to exceptional effect without entirely breaking with what would be considered good art, it's style and structure seem to nod to the classical portrait. It seems that so much art made in modern mediums, particular digital ones, forsakes so much of what was learned from traditional art. It works as both a very beautiful portrait and also a challenge to any of us who work with modern tools that inspiration can be found from the history of art just as much when you're behind a lens or a computer as when you're behind and easel with a brush.
I'm not sure who the photographer is and have been unable to find out online, but the photo is of Cate Blanchett and was from Men's Vogue.
